The Real Way to Use AI in Your Business

In this episode, I sat down with Bailey Proulx, founder of Operion.io and one of the sharpest operational minds I know when it comes to AI, automation, and systems thinking. If there’s someone I trust to cut through the noise around AI, it’s Bailey.

Most entrepreneurs think they need better AI tools. What they actually need is better clarity.

Right now, AI is the loudest conversation in business. New models launch constantly. New platforms promise leverage, speed, and scale. And I hear the same concern almost daily from founders: “I feel like I’m falling behind.”

But here’s what we unpacked in this conversation. If your business foundation is unclear, AI will not fix it. It will amplify it.

AI Is a Toolbox, Not a Strategy

AI is powerful, but it is not a strategy. It does not replace thinking. It executes on the thinking you bring to it.

If your processes are undefined, if your team operates on tribal knowledge, or if every decision still lives inside your head, AI will simply produce inconsistent results faster. That is not a technology issue. That is a systems issue.

This is where many founders get frustrated. They try a different tool, a different workflow, or a different platform. They assume the problem is the software. In reality, the problem is the structure underneath it.

When your thinking is clear and your systems are documented, AI becomes an amplifier. When they are not, AI becomes noise.

Symptoms Versus Constraints

One of the most important distinctions Bailey made is the difference between symptoms and constraints.

Most business owners spend their time solving visible problems. Revenue dips, a hire underperforms, operations feel chaotic, or customer delivery breaks down. We respond quickly because it feels responsible.

But when you solve a symptom without identifying the constraint underneath it, you enter a cycle of constant firefighting. You stay busy, but the root issue remains.

A constraint might be that knowledge is not extracted from the founder. It might be that decision-making is not documented. It might be that systems are reactive instead of designed.

When you identify and solve the constraint, multiple symptoms resolve at once. That is strategic leadership. That is where real scale begins.

Work Backwards From the Outcome

Most people approach AI by asking what tool they should use. That is the wrong starting point.

Instead, ask yourself what your business would look like if it operated exactly the way you want it to. What would be automated? What would be delegated? What would run without you?

Once you define that outcome clearly, you work backwards. What would need to exist for that to be true? What systems would need to be in place? What knowledge would need to be extracted? What decisions would need to be standardized?

When you reverse engineer from the result, the right tools reveal themselves. When you start with tools, you wander.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

Another powerful moment in our conversation was this reminder: just because you are good at something does not mean you should build a business around it.

Many founders start businesses based on capability. They are technically strong, experienced, and skilled. But capability is not the same as desire.

AI makes it easier than ever to spin up new offers and test new ideas. That speed can be an advantage, but it can also lead you into building something you do not actually want to run long term.

Before you optimize and automate, it is worth asking a harder question. Is this the business you want five years from now? Or are you building something simply because you can?

Winning the wrong game is still losing.

The Real Separation in the AI Era

AI is accessible to everyone. The barrier to entry is lower than ever.

The separation will not come from who has access to the best tools. It will come from who thinks more clearly about their business.

The founders who win in this era will be the ones who identify real constraints, extract their knowledge, build intentional systems, and use AI to support thoughtful decisions. They will not be the ones chasing every update.

If you feel behind, pause. Get clear. Define the outcome. Identify the constraint. Then apply the tool.

AI is powerful. But leadership is what makes it profitable.

That is the real way to use AI in your business.

Chapter List:

00:00 Introduction to AI and Business

02:12 Bailey's Journey into AI and Operations

06:38 Understanding Core Constraints in Business

10:28 The Ecosystem of Business and Responsibility

12:09 AI as a Tool for Problem Solving

15:45 Approaching AI: From Consumption to Creation

21:08 Navigating the Rapid Changes in AI

24:22 Finding Joy and Opportunity in Entrepreneurship

Full Transcript:

Bailey Proulx (00:00)

it's really important to use knowledge as the foundation first, because anything you build as far as AI, any AI, any automations, if you don't have the proper knowledge, you're just going to keep getting bad outputs and blame the AI when realistically it's just a foundation

Amanda Kaufman (00:30)

Well, hey, hey, welcome to the Amanda Kaufman show. And I am so excited about this episode because I sent a cold DM to not a stranger, but someone that I worked with years ago who is a genius, just certifiable genius. So Bailey Prew is a marketing operations and automations and AI systems thinking, like I said, total genius. He...

helped me years ago with finally understanding good ways to do Facebook ads testing. That was my first introduction to him. And I remember when I saw him, he did a presentation in a mastermind that I was in and he went only about 120 miles per minute. I ran out of ink in my pen and I was like, thank goodness I'm secretly recording this thing. He's one of the few people that I've heard speak.

where I not only revisited the recording, I slowed it down so I could take notes and break it down for my team. And it was so impactful what I learned from Bailey in about an hour of his time. I was like, wow. So I've been watching him ever since on the good old Facebook. And I noticed he's been doing a lot of lives lately on a topic that is such a huge buzz. And if there's one person in the whole wide world that I trust to have a very informed opinion about this.

It's Bailey. We're going to talk today about AI and your business. Welcome to the show.

Bailey Proulx (01:57)

Thank you, I appreciate it. I've also really tried to slow down my talking speed, so I think I've gotten better with that over the years, but we'll give that the good old test today.

Amanda Kaufman (02:06)

Yeah, you know, I think when you speak, you want us to understand all the pieces that we have to know. And, know, just means you got to talk fast, but I love it. So Bailey. And so you're working in in AI, you've built a new company fairly recently, looks like of Opearian.io, right? And I noticed.

Bailey Proulx (02:16)

Yeah, my mouth trying to keep up with my brain.

Correct.

Amanda Kaufman (02:31)

I really caught like you're doing a lot of live streams, you're a lot of education content on AI, but I just want to ask on a personal note, what told you to go pursue this next?

Bailey Proulx (02:42)

Yeah, that's a great question. It's actually kind of a series of things. So was in the agency for, I guess, five years at that point. And one thing that we realized in the agency was that as we were actually helping clients, sometimes the clients would be better or worse off in that situation. So what I ended up discovering, it took me some time to think about it. On the marketing side, as we would help clients grow and hit their goals, they would go through a lot of operational struggles. So they would over hire, they wouldn't have the proper training process, the proper documentation.

Like any of the system so things would break a bunch of holes would end up, you know happening inside their business and then they would end up worse off because once you get to that point you have to kind of tear things down in order to build them back up and so about a year and a half ago I got an accident I had some time to like step away like couldn't work for a couple months and I was like where could I help impact businesses the most if it's not just a marketing like we have marketing dialed in the company's good there as I had that accident the team took over the company they were doing fine they were doing better off than when I was in there so I was like

cool, you guys got this under control. I'm gonna go find a different way to help our clients. And that didn't necessarily start with AI and I wouldn't even say it's just AI right now too, it's more of like one of the tools that we use. That brought me down the operational path. I have a lot of background operations too, because I was in a company that we took from zero to 60 million in four years. I was the right hand man to the owner. I got to see all these different things happening. And as I was looking back through what happened with our clients, I realized, these are the same patterns that are happening over and over and over again. So,

And

I built a lot of the systems, pretty much all of them internally in the agency too. I like building. So I like building and solving problems. So as I was going through that, I was trying to find a way that we could help our clients with that. At least initially, it wasn't even going to be a different brand. It was just going to be like another offer that we had internally. But as I started to go down this path that led me through a lot of the intelligent automations, AI, I have a little bit of a background in software engineering too. So like I can conceptually understand a lot of these flows and variables and all the technical stuff that I'm not going to get into.

to today, but I was able to like conceptualize that. And then that just kind of like brought me down the rabbit hole of all things, you know, AI automation, even just operations in general, which I think I have a very different take on it. Like because I have the operational background and problem solving that I go through, it's not like going through the shiny objects. It's not just approaching here's this symptom that you're experiencing. It's a lot deeper. So I started to go through that and I realized pretty quickly, okay, we actually need our own brand for this because

There's so much different value and positioning that we could have in this in this company ⁓ And then yeah, and I actually didn't even launch the company for about seven months after like taking on clients on the side just to like test out hey am I am I like missing something here or am I just Not missing something but when we were working with people I'm like is what I think is gonna work actually going to work and I don't like to go and like use clients money to Figure that stuff out. So we you know cut them some deals. They were people that I knew

Amanda Kaufman (05:10)

Mm-hmm.

Bailey Proulx (05:35)

and the results were great with that and I was like, okay, I think we're actually onto something here. And then that sparked the period.

Amanda Kaufman (05:40)

That's such a great lesson right there of

like, hey, I've got this idea. I've got this hypothesis of something that I think would really help another person. And I love that you did that, you know, that you were, you were finding, you know, people that were, I call them champions, you know, people that you already have a good rapport with, a good relationship with, you know, a little bit more relational safety just in case it doesn't quite go to what you think, because it was a hypothesis. That's awesome.

Bailey Proulx (06:05)

Yeah, exactly. mean, they knew what they were getting into too. think a lot of them, you know, I've been very lucky with a lot of relationships and just my journey in general. I think a lot of them really bought into like, hey, this is you doing it. I trust you. I like the way you think. So even if this isn't proven, I'm willing to pay you guys to do it. We were given into them basically at cost. So it was less risk to them, but I was able to test those theories because there's people I've been able to do those with before, even on the media buying side and marketing side. So I think I was blessed in that aspect of people believing in me to be able to go and

test these and then get results are better than I thought they would be which was great and that's kind of what sparked that we should probably create a business around this because a lot of people need this.

Amanda Kaufman (06:44)

That's so

good. That's so good. And just what is your business? What is the core thing that you do? I know AI features into it pretty heavily, because that's what I noticed in your content. But just in general, if you're working with someone, just so that the listener understands, what is the scope? What is it that you exactly help people with?

Bailey Proulx (07:08)

Yeah, so I guess the easiest way to describe it is we help solve constraints in people's businesses. So.

I guess let me lay some foundation here, symptoms versus core constraints. So in business, people experience lot of symptoms and the symptoms are like this thing that you can see, like the thing that you think about, like, hey, I'm having bad hires. Hey, this department's starting to struggle. This KPI is being missed. And so the natural reaction for business owners is, hey, I see a problem. Let me go and solve that problem. And what you end up solving is a symptom. So when you're solving these symptoms, you might solve it temporarily. You have extra business resource.

that go there, extra attention, the team's gonna follow your direction. You fix it, another thing pops up, you go and fix that, and then what ends up happening is you just play whack-a-mole with things happening in the business, thinking you're being busy by solving things, but nothing's actually changing. You're just becoming a professional firefighter. Then what ends up happening is when you go and solve these, you don't get to the core constraint, you end up adding actually more complication to it because you're adding more manual processes and steps to that. So when you actually do go try to solve it again, it's more

complicated,

it's more complicated, it's more complicated. Yeah, so when we come into businesses, we first thing we do is identify that core constraint. So core constraint meaning what if you take these groups of symptoms, they usually come down to like a set of constraints. It's either like a data and automation thing, a knowledge syndication, or like the founder being stuck in a lot of the business decisions and not being able to syndicate that knowledge.

Amanda Kaufman (08:13)

Mmm.

Bailey Proulx (08:35)

So when we come in, we basically look at all the problems that businesses experiencing, try to find the core constraint, and then essentially solve that core constraint. And so that, that piece is, I guess, really where the AI piece comes in, where we don't just do AI, but we take a look, cool, here's a core constraint, here's the symptoms, let's solve the core constraint first, and then you can essentially branch off solutions into those symptoms to fix it. So it's not like just solving the core constraint fixes the core constraint. It's the foundation to build

on top of then go and solve the symptoms to actually be able to solve them. So with that, obviously AI is a big part of that. Automation is a big part of that. Even build outs of, you know, CRMs, things like that. But yeah, really, AI is one of the tools to be able to go and do that. But we come in, we solve core constraints in a business, we solve their symptoms and help them grow. So they stop running into roadblocks that they are usually too close to see. Right. When you're that close to the business, it's really hard to zoom out and see those things and even hard to

except like it doesn't happen to me this is like a unique situation and while I will say that yeah yeah and like the things that people run into they think they're unique and they are unique but they're they come from the same place so yes it might like it might

Amanda Kaufman (09:38)

The Snowflake Syndrome.

Bailey Proulx (09:50)

manifest differently, but it's really the same core constraints that people run into. So anyways, we come in outside perspective, help identify the core constraints, and then figure out the best solution to solve those core constraints and symptoms to help unlock the business for growth.

Amanda Kaufman (10:03)

I love it. I love it. So you may not know this about me, Bailey, but I was a strategy consultant and an operations consultant for about a decade before I became an entrepreneur. And I did it with one of the biggest consulting firms in the world. And the definition of strategy, and you're doing strategy, dude, right? So the definition of strategy that they taught us was it's the decision-making we make about the resources that we have to get the best possible outcome.

Bailey Proulx (10:16)

Nice, okay, I didn't know that.

like that.

Amanda Kaufman (10:29)

In a nutshell, I thought you might like that. Steal it right. I didn't say that I wasn't the first one, but I think it was probably a Peter Drucker quote or something like that. ⁓ you know, you're so right. Like how many business owners have you met? How many have I met where they blame themselves, right? They often blame themselves. And it's like almost like the dark side of radical responsibility that most entrepreneurs and founders take is they're like, I'm responsible for everything. And it's like, yes.

Bailey Proulx (10:34)

yet.

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (10:58)

And you are building a system. And so often conflating that identity with the system. That's where when I'm doing human performance and high performance coaching is really to help people reclaim agency and stop that self blame cycle so that they can make a new decision with the resources that they have so they get a better outcome. I think I was in business for

15 years before anybody ever taught me a constraint theory because so often we're taught silos and pieces of the business and a lot of business owners like they're technicians like they're technically good like that's what that's what started my business I was an amazing coach really good coach that does not make me a good business owner

Right. And, you know, I'm blessed to say like you, you helped me break my business as well. Right. With having like more traffic going through on the marketing side. But that's such a blessing too. Like when you do finally realize like, the problem isn't necessarily the symptom. You know, like if I take another aspirin, sure, it might suppress the pain for a little while, but is it resolving the real source of the headaches? Right.

Bailey Proulx (11:41)

Yep. Yep.

Amanda Kaufman (12:07)

And that really is the game of business, isn't it?

Bailey Proulx (12:10)

It really isn't even business. Yeah. And I think that even thinking you mentioned something here about responsibility and systems, I think a good like frame that helped me a lot was thinking about business as an ecosystem. And sometimes the way to solve a problem isn't the direct path to get there. So, hey, there's this, there's this thing I'm experiencing in the business that might be a system, but sometimes there's things you have to do either upstream or downstream, meaning the things that it affects or the things that affects it to get to the solution too. So being able to like break that down in my head of like, this is an

Amanda Kaufman (12:21)

Mmm.

Bailey Proulx (12:39)

ecosystem. I don't have to go and solve this in a silo, right? Or I don't have to treat each team like a silo, but if I can think about this as a chain of events that happens throughout the business for the, you know, for the thing the business is doing, that's really where it unlocks. So I think also thinking like that, where you break out of the silo and start to expand, I think where AI can help a lot is breaking down paradigms and stop thinking about trying to solve, you know, old problems with old tools, but knowing that we have new tools to our ability to break down that paradigm to be able to solve them.

Amanda Kaufman (12:48)

Hmm.

Bailey Proulx (13:08)

with the new tools. I think that's hard because everyone's so used to doing things a certain way that when you have a chance to not do it that way, it's like a hard paradigm break. And so I think AI is becoming a lot more of the people that can think better are going to have the biggest separation. A lot of people think, hey, AI is going to take my job or it's going to make things easier. It's really not. AI just enables you to be able to bring a lot of your ideas to life. It really comes down to who's going to have the better ideas or be able to extract those better ideas.

Amanda Kaufman (13:13)

Hmm.

Bailey Proulx (13:36)

That's where I see the mark here now.

Amanda Kaufman (13:37)

So interesting, because

if you think about that definition I gave of strategy, it's the resources we have. AI is essentially accessible to everyone. It is so democratized as a tool. Whereas even starting my business just eight years ago, the barriers to entry were so much higher and mainly around relevant information.

Understanding, for example, the fundamentals of marketing. Fine. But if you want to really perform at that higher level, it's more than doing marketing, right? Like you need to have a real strategy to and everybody's getting the same tools. So I totally agree with you that it's it's how do you create and how do you how do you shift out of the consumption attitude and into the creator attitude? And are you creating something

that is valuable, you know, and that is going to be supported by the market and your collaborators and the other people are like,

That's cool. Like I want to support that. That's going to help. That's going to be really amazing versus I think we're moving out of a stage where people would just be like, how do I, how do I, how do I buy the right software? I turn on the right switches and then, you know, print, print my money. You know what I mean? So good. So Bailey, when somebody is like approaching

Bailey Proulx (14:51)

Yep.

Amanda Kaufman (14:56)

One of the reasons I reached directly out to you is so many people are talking about AI and like from very advanced, know, very established entrepreneurs, all the way down to the beginner entrepreneur. And they're all claiming I use AI, right? Like if I, if I just put the question out there, everybody's using AI and you know, they're using it pretty extensively in some cases, you know?

I'm so curious your perspective on how are entrepreneurs adopting AI really? And is there a an approach that that would probably serve most people better? Because there's kind of like I guess I'm falling back on a bit of a philosophy that I've had for a while, which is if you want what everybody else has, do what everybody else does.

And if everybody's approaching it one way, then everybody's gonna get the same result. And then there's not really like that outlier like we were talking about before of being an outlier creator. What do you see as maybe a frame or a way of thinking or philosophy about how to apply AI in our business in a way that is really creating value and not maybe the new consumption tool du jour?

Bailey Proulx (16:15)

Yeah, I think...

Amanda Kaufman (16:16)

I may be leading

the witness on that question, but you know, do with it what you will.

Bailey Proulx (16:18)

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, so I think

how people are approaching AI is a good place to start because...

you know, how you, how, in my opinion, you should approach AI is kind of on the inverse of that. What I see a lot of people doing is chasing the shiny object in the industry, meaning, Hey, this new tool came out, this new, you know, LLM model came out. Hey, I saw this person make this thing. And so they ended up jumping around thinking that there's something that someone else is doing that they need to catch up on. And they're always going to be behind. It's like jump around versus being able to dive deeper in something. Now, in my opinion, I think it's, I think it's not quite an opinion. I think it's probably a fact, but you know, in my opinion,

The AI automation world is very much just a big sandbox. It's a big you just have so many Legos that you can choose from to get to the result that you want to get to that no two solutions are the same no two businesses are the same and it's about Impossible to say I want to go and learn AI I'm gonna go and Google it right if you're looking for something You're not gonna be able to find it because there's so much stuff out there that you can do You're not gonna be able to find what you need because no one's gonna have the same situation. So I talked about approaching AI

There's a couple different layers to go through but number one is always going through what we were also mentioning with the core constraint and symptoms trying to identify your core constraints in the business that if this pretty much singular thing is unlocked how

like what other promises is solved that really unlocks my business, right? So you're solving the problem that solves the problems. But if you can start to break down the paradigms on not just like trying to solve things with what you already know and the old tools that existed and you come up with the solution, you can then work backwards off the solution to figure out how to get there. So it's actually reverse engineering from here's actually like perfect world scenario. If I could just have this happen, then all my problems would be solved. If you can work backwards and say, cool, how do I get

there. Like what needs to happen? What has to be true to get there? Cool. Let me go and research this. You'll find a bunch of new stuff that you didn't know about. Cool. Now in order to do this, I need to do this previous step and you end up just going backwards to get there to figure out, cool, this is where I need to start. But I think what a lot of people try to do is they go, I need to start here and then do this thing and then do this thing. And you end up somewhere completely off of what you should actually be solving in the business. But if you go backwards to then learn the things that need to be true that you would have to, you'd have to implement in order to get there.

to your own path, your own Lego blocks. But every single software, low code, no code, any of those tools out there, they can be used in so many different ways. You're not going to learn anything trying to start somewhere and progress, but you have to move backwards because that's where you'll find a lot of stuff. Even for me, as I was going through everything, I learned the most amount of stuff going backwards. have so many, like my team would tell me every day we talk like, dude, every single day you're just learning so much new stuff. And it's not me trying to go and learn new stuff. It's just me trying to solve problems for us internally and

for

our clients. So I think approaching it that way to figure out these are the things I need to learn that create the reverse chain to get to the result. I think that's how people should be approaching it. Right. But unfortunately, a lot of people see content. They say, cool, I like that video. I'm going to go and learn more about that. And then they try to figure out how am going to use that tool in my business versus what do I need? Like, what do I need in my business to reverse engineer what tools you need in order to make that possible? So working backwards is really where it's unlocked. You can get ideas from content, but you shouldn't try to start there.

Amanda Kaufman (19:31)

That's good.

Bailey Proulx (19:36)

You should just use those as an idea generation, a Lego block that you could be using to architect the solution that you need.

Amanda Kaufman (19:42)

Well, and like to add further fuel to that assertion, that fire, you know, when I very first started my business.

that philosophy of backwards is actually how I did it. I was like, look, requirement need to replace corporate income ASAP. And what I was seeing everybody doing as they were kind of tiptoeing into the ocean of coaching is like, well, I'll go get the certification. Well, I'll charge like $50 an hour and well, maybe someday I'll earn the right to charge more. And what I did is I just basically was like, cool, $30,000 a year. And I started looking for $30,000 actually.

$300,000 problems to solve with people that they would, you know, pay my fee and be like, best money I've ever spent. Right? Like that was, that's how I approached launching this business. And I, and I would say, argue it's a really big reason that I'm here, but it was exactly that thinking. It wasn't like I'm going to someday earn the right or someday figure it out or someday wander my way into my goal. was like, no.

this is where we land. What's the best way to do that, you know, with the resources I have today, right? So not to say it wasn't scary. It was absolutely terrifying. so Bailey, like you've talked a lot about the constraint and, know, if I'm talking to people kind of on these Internet streets of as as fellow entrepreneurs, like at the end of the day, how do I make more money? How do I save more time or have more freedom? Because like

you know, how many entrepreneurs got into this so that they could ultimately have freedom and then end up caged by their own business? How will this replace me? Like, these are the kinds of questions that people tend to reach out with. And I would say, like, especially with the speed up of the technology, more and more, I'm hearing this lamentation of I'm falling behind.

right? So these are the things I'm hearing every single day, so I'd love your reaction.

Bailey Proulx (21:38)

Yeah, I mean, think falling behind is definitely like the technology is already so advanced.

unless you're already really deep in AI, that new technology coming out is not gonna make a big impact for you. If anything, it's gonna make it more complicated because the models are so much smarter now. As the model gets smarter and you don't have the proper documentation and training for it, you end up having it hallucinate more, meaning it starts to go off in la-la land and not be able to create a consistent result. So I actually recommend people not to go after the shiny stuff and just focus on one thing deeply. So for example, that whole clod.

Claude bought or whatever just came out a couple weeks ago, which is definitely up my alley of the more technical side of things But I'm not even focusing on that have my own thing that I'm doing right now that I want to go deep on that I have a clear understanding of how it works how I'm creating a system around it to be able to actually build the solution that I want I don't think falling behind actually that's probably the worst place to go to Because you're not gonna be able to sit down focus on one thing long enough. So I think focusing on here's like the core Foundation that I want to set and I think

Knowledge is the biggest piece of that you mentioned, you getting out of your business It's a big thing for founders, especially technical founders that said hey, I'm really good at this thing I want to go and start a business about it is like a pro and a con because you have a certain way of doing things Like there's a certain way that you do it. It's hard to distill out of your head So you're training people you have to teach them a lot more of the why but a lot of people as you scale you teach them all the what? You know how time would teach him the why and so like distilling that information out and using that is even a thing you can use AI for

of

like, here's all of our processes that we do. An important thing, think just overall with AI is actually having a focus on extraction first. So even with the agency, as I started to move more out of the agency, we had all these different like things that we would do for different situations. And it was so hard to train people initially, because it's like, yeah, you just have to.

do this thing because we've had the experience to able to solve this before. To be able to extract the thinking and the philosophies and the approach to be able to get there was super important for us, where it's like if we can teach people how to think, it doesn't matter what situation they're gonna run into. I think it's a big thing with businesses is they're technical. Yeah, yeah, and so I.

Amanda Kaufman (23:43)

That's such gold right there. Yes. Yeah.

Bailey Proulx (23:47)

I think it's a huge thing is how do you extract, right? The not just the what, but the why and the how. And if you can then teach that as you're onboarding people and then you give them some sort of way to be able to like extract that knowledge and to learn, you're gonna really unlock yourself. But again, a lot of people get stuck in the what and then a problem happens, they go, gonna solve that with this thing, but don't get to like the core philosophy and the thinking behind it. So yeah, I mean, I think that's a big thing, especially for founders.

We can talk about some systems you can do to help extract that, but...

I think specifically if you're founders, technical founders, it's really important to use knowledge as the foundation first, because anything you build as far as AI, any AI, any automations, if you don't have the proper knowledge, you're just going to keep getting bad outputs and blame the AI when realistically it's just a foundation

that isn't set up properly so you're not going to be able to get a consistent result, which has people lose trust in AI. Then they think that the new thing coming out is going to be the thing that solves the problem because the last model didn't do what it was supposed to do. So this new model might do that versus let me just focus on one thing.

and really start to tune it and trust in it and then figure out the system.

Amanda Kaufman (24:52)

I love that. What about for like,

for people that are looking for a new opportunity. So I couldn't help but notice, you identified a new opportunity, you you really had a big reflection moment about what you want to do next. And that's so powerful. There's a lot of people that are in my community, my audience that maybe they've been an employee or maybe they've worked in a more traditional business and now they're wanting to start like an expert-based business. But they're not yet at the place where they can hire team, they're kind of a solo printer.

massive advantage, would imagine. But what would you suggest to someone who is maybe in this place where their constraint is they haven't started yet, they don't have any real-world data?

Bailey Proulx (25:35)

Yeah, I mean, think using...

AI to help spark those ideas is probably one of the most underutilized things. So people, in my opinion, again, go to AI and they want it to solve their problem. Meaning they're like, you know, I'll give it this input, I get an output, and then that's like the, that's the circle that you go through. Yeah. But realistically, I think the best way to go about it is one, to use it to help spark ideas. And when I approach things like that, where I'm like, I don't really know what direction to go with this, I like to start really wide. Meaning I want like the most diverse type of outputs that I can get

Amanda Kaufman (25:51)

be based.

Bailey Proulx (26:07)

diverse type of ideas and then start to like cherry pick things from those that I like to start to get better ideas. So it's a really good brainstorming piece too. for example, let's say you're like, I'm really good at this thing, but I don't want to do a whole business around all these. You can start to like give inputs to say, cool, what are different avenues or business models I can create about this? You get an output and you're like, yeah, I like that part. I don't like that part. I don't like that part. You you can start to combine those to start to get to the perfect solution that you're looking for, but strategically

purposefully going wide and then starting to narrow in to essentially find what you're looking for. But again, think people will just go to, I'm gonna put this input in and then I'm get this output and then if it doesn't work, I'm just gonna keep talking to it to try to get it right versus being more strategic in the way they're trying to extract information and combine information with that. I mean, at least for us, when I was going through this for the Apurion side, we had the automation side, we could do the AI side. And when I was going through that,

Amanda Kaufman (26:55)

Mm-hmm.

Bailey Proulx (27:02)

That's

kind of essentially what I did was like, can do all these things, but what essentially is going to have the biggest impact? Do I think I can build a team around? Do I think is the most duplicatable? That's one thing in the agency that we didn't have, which is we're so technical on the media buying side that it was really hard to duplicate that and really hard to hire for and train for it. So I want something that we could have to be a little more duplicatable and more consistent. So it's like all these different life experiences. I was able to add in that of things I liked that I didn't like in prior things. I was able to then start to feed.

into this to then get the idea of Opearian and what we focus on in the business. I think another piece of that too is just because you're good at something doesn't mean that that's something you have to do in business. A lot of people are good at a lot of things, but you don't have to do all those things. Like you should go and pick the things in there that you want to do. So just because you can do something does not mean you should. My first agency I had that we were doing webinar build outs and know and funnels and all this stuff and I was like that I can do those right, but if I focus deeply

on media buying, I love at the time from the technical aspect, we can get a better result. I can stay singularly focused, but more of the story, just because you can doesn't mean you should. You should find what you love and then try to piece that with your life experiences to figure out is this actually the business in five years that I'm gonna still love or am I just trying to do a quick cash grab right now?

and then end up hating the business later. Because I think a lot of people go through that too. They build a business they don't like, they get to the end, they're like, I started this to get more time and now I'm busier than ever. Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (28:28)

What game did I win? What game did I

win, right? And that was a huge motive for me to become an entrepreneur, is I did spend a decade working in a corporate consulting structure. And there were so many amazing things about that. And if I'd stayed on that path, I mean, I well could have, but it wasn't my joy, because I didn't get to get scrappy with people kind of boots on the ground with things the way that I love to do.

You you do really have to choose your joy. And I think the other piece of that is find the resonance of the joy, right? Because I think sometimes we get a little stuck in like, I was valued in this organization for this particular talent, right? And the thing is, is that there's other talents that would be appreciated in other forums, but unless you explore for those forums, and that's something that AI can accelerate in a really big way.

Bailey Proulx (29:06)

Ahem.

Amanda Kaufman (29:20)

because it can help you identify like, are there communities like this? Are there companies like this? Can you give me examples? Right. And it can just, it's, I was going to say shortcut, but really a more accurate word would be it accelerates your exploration. You can accelerate your, your exploration of ideas. I love it. Okay. Bailey. What? ⁓ yes.

Bailey Proulx (29:37)

Yeah.

On that topic real quick though, on the joy side, I think a good thing

to do is there's so many different ways. Like if you go to a conference, everyone makes money in different ways. Everyone tries to find the thing that they're gonna make the most money with. But I mean, that's easy to do with the business is you could say, this is what I love to do. What are different ways I can make money from this? And then you'll start to go wide and start to get ideas of all the different ways you can make money with it. And you can go, cool, I like that one. I like that idea, I like that idea. And you can start to combine them. But now, before when we started, you had to be like, cool, I wanna do this. How the heck do I go?

Amanda Kaufman (29:45)

Mm-hmm.

Bailey Proulx (30:07)

How the heck would I make money versus not being able to leverage that to have the ideas and the direction for the AI to help spark those ideas as well. But now you can make money from everything. You don't have to know how to do that out of the gate. It can help the ideation, the strategy. It can help with that whole process now, which is something I didn't have, you know, starting. had to figure out how to make all the money. So I think it's important thing to build a business that you love because now you truly can without trying to like figure it out as you go because otherwise you'll end up five years down the road, not like the business and be like,

the heck did I start this anyway? So it should be a forethought, not an afterthought of how do I, for me in the agency, was like, how do I love this? I didn't necessarily love it upfront. But I was always trying to convince myself of why I loved it versus just building a business that I loved in the first place.

Amanda Kaufman (30:52)

Mmm.

I love that so much. I'm so glad that you found something that is sparking some joy Bailey if people wanted to keep up with you, what's the best way to do that?

Bailey Proulx (31:00)

Probably Instagram would be the best bet is Bailey B-A-I-L-E-Y underscore P-R-O-U-L-X.

Amanda Kaufman (31:08)

Amazing, amazing. And dear listener, we've got Bailey's links in the show notes below. Bailey, thank you so much for being here.

Bailey Proulx (31:15)

Thank you, I appreciate you having me on here, it fun.

Amanda Kaufman (31:18)

So fun. And dear listener, if you have been thinking about AI and talking about it with your friends, why don't you grab the link to this episode and text it on over or send them a DM. Share this episode because we talked about a lot of really impactful ideas for established business owners and startup business owners to make great decisions using AI. So I'm sure you've got some friends that would really love to hear this episode. And by the way, don't sneak away without hitting the subscribe button. If you're like me, you might

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